Adams to Decide Budget, Warrant Articles Tonight
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Town meeting will begin at 7 p.m. at Adams Memorial Middle School.
This year, the town warrant lists 32 articles, including Article 7, which requests $98,640 for a variety of small municipal projects, such as $10,000 to repair Town Hall's leaking clock tower and $12,000 for asbestos removal and ceiling replacement in the basement of the Registry of Deeds. The Finance Committee originally voted not to recommend the nine items but when they were reviewed individually, all but two were recommended.
The committee did not advise spending $12,600 for a Town Hall telephone system upgrade and $5,500 for repairs to the field house roof at the Valley Street field.
The 2008 budget was $8.9 million.
Article 11 on the warrant will take considerable explaining, according to Adams-Cheshire Regional School District Superintendent Alfred Skrocki, who has been working to secure funding for a major school building project in town. The article asks the town to authorize the borrowing of up to $400,000 to conduct Phase 1 of a school building project that school officials hope will see a Grades 7 through 12 curriculum at Hoosac Valley High School.
The funds will be used to hire a project manager and a designer to conduct a feasibility study and develop a project proposal, which will include schematic drawings.
The towns will be reimbursed by the School Building Authority at a 68.4 percent base rate, which translates into a total cost of $126,400 for both towns. Adams would be responsible for $89,200 of that amount and Cheshire, $37,200.
Though no plans have been finalized, Skrocki said the district is looking to return Adams Memorial Middle School to the town and move the seventh and eighth grades to the high school. Because C.T. Plunkett Elementary School is already crowded, the problem of where to place the sixth grade will need to be addressed by the feasibility study.
The Columbia Street middle school building is more than 50 years old and has a laundry list of problems, including a deteriorating roof, an aging heating and cooling system and classrooms that fail to meet space recommendations.
Two major bylaw amendments are also on the warrant this year, with requests to restructure both the sewer and sewer disposal bylaw and the property maintenance bylaw.
Taken from Pittsfield statutes, Article 28 asks for more specific regulations on property upkeep by local homeowners. Concerned about a rising number of vacant or blighted properties, new guidelines would give Code Enforcement Officer Scott Koczela and Building Commissioner David Pelletier more authority to pursue violators.
At their last workshop meeting, selectmen said they thought the article was too complicated and unclear and would need further review before it came before town meeting. The board will encourage town meeting members to vote down the article until a new one can be created.
